My name is Pardric Otuma and I love ancient mythologies. I love the epic of Gilgamesh, the

Popolvo, Inferno. I find the fact that they're so ancient in farming because while circumstances have changed

you know the internet or teabags or kettles what hasn't changed so often is dynamics of power

an exclusion and valor and character. I love the way that old

conditions of the human experience have been reoccurring in these texts of ours for so many millennia

and artists and storytellers, whether they could write or not, have been perfecting the psychology, not of perfect characters, but of imperfect characters,

just like ourselves and just like themselves. Bearwolf, lines 1 through 25, translated by Maria Devana Hedley.

Broel, tell me we still know how to speak of Kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were,

brave, bold, glory-bound. Only stories now, but I'll sound the Speardain's song hoarded for

hungry times. Their first father was a foundling, shield shaving. He spent his youth, fists up, brow-beating every barstool

brother, bonfiring his enemies. That man began in the waves, a baby in a basket, but he bootstrapped his way into a kingdom,

trading loneliness for luxury. Whether they thought kneeling necessary or no, everyone from head to tail of the whale road

bent down. There's a king, there's his crown. That was a good king. Later, God sent Shield a son, a wolf cup, further

proof of manhood. Being God, he knew how the spear Danes had suffered, the misery they'd mangled through

leaderless, long years of loss, so the life lord, the Almighty Big Boss burst them an Earth shaker.

Beo's name kissed legions of lips by the time he was half-grown,

but his own father was still breathing. We all know a boy can't daddy until his daddy's

dead. A smart son gives gifts to his father's friends in peacetime. When war wooes him, as war will, he'll need those troops to follow

the leader. Privilege is the way men prime power the world over. So, So this is the first 25 lines of the great poem Beowulf. That poem is almost 3,200 lines long.

So we're only giving you a short bit. It was written in old English and it's at least

a thousand years old. It might have been written sometime between the seventh and 10 centuries and

it's set in what is now Denmark and southern Sweden and it's about a

...